Flanders and Swann – the gentle masters of British revue

Donald Swann would have been 90 today. Sadly, he died at 70, in 1994. His singing partner, Michael Flanders (father of the BBC's Stephanie Flanders) died at only 53, in 1975.

They are still remembered today for their tremendous revue, At the Drop of a Hat, and a few of their songs – notably the Hippopotamus and Gnu songs. But it would be wrong just to remember them as a comic act.

Flanders's lyrics are extremely clever, involving a lot of word play which comes across very naturally but are, at heart, often complex. Swann's music is lyrical, elegiac, gentle. Their song, Slow Train, about the Beeching cuts to the railway lines, is a classic, mixing the beguiling names of lost train stations – Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Chester-le-Street – with the rhythm of a moving train and Swann's melancholy piano melody.

Both Flanders and Swann were educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford. But Swann's origins are a lot more exotic: part-Azerbaijani, part-Russian, he was a descendant of Alfred Trout Swan, a Lincolnshire draper who emigrated to Russia in the 1840s. Born in Llanelli, he was a conscientious objector in the war before he became a prolific composer – he wrote or set to music almost 2,000 songs. Happy Birthday!